Well, you could get lazy, throw up a woven wire bin in a corner somewhere and toss them all in. Shovel some dirt on top to hold them in and wait for a year to spread your leaf mold wherever you want it. That's the way we used to handle ours. Now we put them over the asparagus bed and wish we had more leaves. The ice storm seriously pruned our trees and reduced our leaf supply.

I like Dorothy's suggestion. There's no reason you have to shred them all immediately. Of course, if you want to torture yourself now, go ahead. In the spring, I suspect you'll be really glad you have them all, whether shredded or not.

I do hope you're wearing a mask so you're not inhaling all that dust!

Dawn

Well, I think you've talked me into waiting until spring to do the rest. After work today, i started spreading my shredded leaves out on all of my beds and my 16 bags were just enough to mulch everything! It was kind of sad in a way...to just empty out all of those bags that I worked so hard to fill, but that was the original purpose, right?

I wet down all of the shredded leaves so that they won't blow away. Hopefully that will be enough. I hear it is supposed to be pretty windy tomorrow... I suppose when it freezes tonight, the wet leaves should freeze as well and stay in place a little better.

When I said "Dump them all in," I meant dump the leaves out of the bags and just let them set for a year in the wire enclosure, with a little dirt to hold them down and start the decomp. In a year or less, you will have the most beautiful leaf mold. And if you don't get enough rain over the winter to dampen them good, you can water them. The only year this didn't work for us was over the 05-06 winter. That year the leaves stayed so dry all winter that we took down two bins because they were too close to the house during that year of burning, and it was inconvenient to drag a hose.

leaves branches or coconuts! shred all and spread around your garden!

I wonder if that's spam?

I totally agree with Dorothy and Dawn. I've even had leaves, INSIDE a contractor's bag, albeit one with holes in it, which broke down into leaf mold. I just dump them where I want them and let nature do the work. Shredding is nice. But it is not necessarily if you have the time. I don't even have a shredder and I collect leaves.

George

Years ago when I moved into a rental there was a plastic bag in the yard, and when I opened it up it was mulch. Someone had left the yard leaves, etc. in the bag. our lawn mow mulches our leaves when we mow the lawn. If my husband doesn't have the mulcher on I tell him to just blow them in the flower beds. one year I went to weed one of my flower beds, and just picked up the leaves as I came to them and crushed them in my hands as I was pulling the weeds next to them. I have been known to go to other people's homes and have carried away bags of leaves; the best are those that have been mulched. my sister has around 300 bags a year and won't listen to me when I tell her to blow them into her garden beds. if she lived here I would tell her to bring them to me. she pays someone $300 to haul them away.

George, It probably is. I will poke holes in bags of leaves on purpose to allow moisture and air flow. This process can create leaf mold just over the course of the winter, if it is a wet winter like we just had. Nothing has improved my soil more than the leaves. Yesterday I was scooping last year's pathway mulch, which was a combination of shredded leaves and lawn clippings, up out of the pathways and onto the tops of the raised beds. It all is decomposed, so dark brown, rich and crumbly. It always amazes me, even after all these years, that something as simple as shredded leaves and grass clippings layered into pathways all spring and summer will give me such beautiful compost for the next planting season. I never tire of the marvel of it all. Composting directly in the pathways is so much more efficiently than hauling stuff out to an official compost pile, waiting for it to break down, and then hauling it back to the beds, so during the growing season I drop weeds right into the mulched pathways where they decompose along with everything else. I still have an official compost pile too, but I've moved it inside the big garden so I don't have to spend as much time taking stuff to it.

Jessaka, It really is too bad your sister doesn't live here. Think of how wonderful it would be to have all those leaves!

Dawn